A university vice-chancellor came up with an eye-catching way of encouraging donors to give generously to a fundraising appeal.

Eric Thomas decided to lead by example and contributed £100,000 from his family savings towards a centenary fund for improvements at the University of Bristol. He feels good about his gift, but admits that he should first have discussed it with his wife. The money - the bigger part of their savings - had been earmarked to help their daughter to buy a flat.

“I felt I could not go around asking other people to give significant amounts to our appeal if I'm not prepared to do it myself,” Professor Thomas, 55, said.

“Giving this kind of money makes you understand the emotions that people go through when they give significant amounts. It helps you understand what you are asking people to do.

“It makes you realise that it is not just you giving, it is your whole family. In this case the money could have paid for a deposit on my daughter's flat in London. But she understands - she works in the fundraising department of Kings College London.”

The University of Bristol, founded on a gift now worth £400 million from the Wills tobacco and Fry chocolate families, is aiming to raise £100 million in the appeal, which is being launched to coincide with its centenary in 2009. The money will be used across the university on a range of improvements, including rebuilding the arts and social science library, boosting spending on medical research and providing bursaries and scholarships.

The appeal is part of a wider movement to encourage more donations to universities - particularly from their alumni - to build up endowments worth billions of pounds, in imitation of the Ivy League universities in America. John Denham, the Universities Secretary, is keen to persuade graduates who have built up great financial wealth in the City or in industry to give something back to their former universities.

Professor Thomas, a doctor of medicine, said that the money would be used to fund a post-doctoral post in classics - his daughter's subject at university.

The gift represents considerably more than half of his salary; he earns £270,000 a year, taking home about £164,000. He has no mortgage, but says that he now has little savings either.

He hopes that the fundraising appeal will bring the university close to its roots. The five original “redbrick” universities - Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield and Liverpool - were founded on donations by philanthropists.

British universities receive donations of about £200 million a year, with at least 50 institutions actively engaged in fundraising.

The University of Oxford last year began the biggest fundraising drive ever by a European academic institution, aiming to raise £1.25 billion to pay for expansion and to reduce its dependency on state funding. Cambridge is seeking to raise £1billion.

Monuments to generosity

The University of Bristol was founded on a donation - equivalent to £400million today - from the Wills and Fry families

The University of Leeds was founded with money from the Nussey brothers, local textile manufacturers

John Owens, who had made his fortune in the cotton trade, gave nearly £100,000 to found a university college in Manchester

Sir Josiah Mason, a wealthy self-educated industrialist, gave thousands of pounds towards establishing a science college, the precursor of the University of Birmingham

The University of Nottingham was started with a donation from Sir Jesse Boot. Boots the Chemist remains a benefactor

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